Know Your Company's story

Know Your Company was originally built by Basecamp
(previously known as 37signals), the makers of the world's most popular project management tool.

The co-founder & CEO of Basecamp, Jason Fried, had started to feel managerial growing pains.
Once they hit 30 employees, Jason could tell he didn't know his company as well as he used to.

So Jason and the Basecamp team set to work on a fix. They prototyped and prototyped
until they ended up with a solution that worked for them. They called it, Know Your Company.

Growing up, moving out.

Basecamp started using Know Your Company in early 2013. It ended up working
so well for them, they launched it to the public a few months later.

Know Your Company was so successful as a product, Basecamp decided to
spin it off into its own company.
In 2014, Know Your Company, the product, became Know Your Company, the company, and Claire Lew,
became the new CEO. (You can read about how we cut the actual spin-off deal
with Basecamp here.)

Previously, Claire had run her own consulting practice called ClarityBox
to help CEOs uncover blindspots in their company and get to know their
employees better. She'd felt the pain of working in a company where
Know Your Company didn't exist. Since then, she's made it her life's
work to help others not feel the same way. You can watch her tell
that story here.

Who we are today.

Today, as our own standalone company, Know Your Company helps over 300
business owners with 15,000 employees in more than 25 countries build
happier, more productive workplaces.

Our mission is to help people become happier at work. We believe this
happens when people can communicate openly and honestly at work. You can
read our company's beliefs about why and how we choose to do this here:

We're an entirely bootstrapped company – we believe this keeps us honest to
truly solve the problem of feedback for business owners and serve them well.

We're also a deliberately small team. We've observed the pitfalls firsthand of hiring too quickly,
and we believe that high-quality work has nothing to do with headcount.

We want to be in business for the long haul... 10, 15, 20 years from now,
and beyond! By staying small and independent as business, it enables us to
stick around for longer, and determine our own fate.

Meet our team

Claire Lew

CEO

Claire's mission in life is to help people become happier at work.
She speaks internationally on how to create more open, honest workplace
environments, and has been published in Harvard Business Review,
Fortune, Inc, Forbes, among others. She writes regularly on
Medium.
Follow her on Twitter,
and email her at claire@knowyourcompany.